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A humanitarian intervention or an affair uncovered?

In a report titled ‘Inconstancy’ a Mr. F. Dixon appeared at Southwark Police Court charged with absconding with another man’s wife and some of his possessions. James Wilkinson, a milkman living in Lincoln’s Inn Fields said that while he gone ‘to the country for a month on business’ Dixon had ran off with his wife. He had tracked them down to an address near St Thomas’ Hospital, south of the River Thames and confronted them.

Dixon had been employed by Wilkinson as a clerk, suggesting that Wilkinson was more than a simple milk deliveryman. Not only had the clerk taken his wife, he raged, he’d also stolen a ‘portrait painting, a Bible, and some other articles’.

Dixon was outraged at the suggestion and said that she had brought the items with her. It is quite likely these were the wife’s own belongings but as all of a woman’s property passed to her husband on marriage in this period Wilkinson claimed them as his own. He then went on to make ‘a long statement’ to the effect that Mrs Dixon had been driven to stay with him because of the cruel treatment meted out to her by Wilkinson. Dixon, he claimed, had only acted out of his ‘humane feelings’ for Mrs. Wilkinson.

The magistrate said he minded to believe the clerk and simply asked him to appear again at a future date after the affair had been looked into more carefully.